Sir Fred Goodwin and Harriet Harman – pensions and bonuses row

I never thought that anyone would make me feel the tiniest batsqueak of sympathy for Sir Fred Goodwin. This is the fellow who brought a great bank to its knees. This is the man whose exuberant and uninhibited incompetence has contrived to land the Royal Bank of Scotland with the largest corporate losses ever – a bleed so colossal that the bank is being kept alive only with seemingly constant transfusions of taxpayers’ haemoglobin.

With his cheeky-chappie smirk and a 12-bore crooked irritatingly over his arm, this is the man who has come to incarnate all the worst vices of the financial services industry. Sir Fred has become the epitome of the bankers who collectively occupy a place in public opinion significantly lower than cannibalistic paedophile global-warming deniers.

When it emerged that he was leaving the RBS with a pension of £693,000 a year, and when he refused to abate that sum in recognition of public feeling, it did not seem that human motivation could go any lower.

It was the kind of blind, gulping, insensate greed that you associate with some milk-eyed creature in a volcanic fissure at the bottom of the Marianas Trench – an organism with no understanding of the existence, let alone the feelings, of other members of the ecosystem. Nothing and no one, you might think, could inspire us even to think of siding with him.

No one, that is, until Harriet Harman took to the airwaves. I don’t wish to sound remotely complacent, but if and when Hattie takes over from Gordon Brown as leader of the Labour Party, the Tories will be able to stop fund-raising and get on with some truly radical and innovative policies, because Labour will be out of office for a decade at least.

She is meant to be Labour’s deputy leader. She is a solicitor, and an alumna of Hammersmith’s highly regarded, fee-paying St Paul’s School for Girls, and she can sometimes be perfectly pleasant and rational. But here is a sample of Harman’s ravings on the subject of Sir Fred and his pension: “He should not be counting on being £650,000 a year better off as a result of this, because it’s not going to happen,” she told the BBC. “It will not be accepted.”

There. Savour the bleating leftie inanity of that sentiment: it will not be accepted. By whom will it not be accepted, Hattie, and how will it not be accepted? Since she agrees – in the same breath – that the details of Sir Fred’s severance from the Royal Bank of Scotland may, in fact, be watertight, her highly trained legal mind must envisage some change in the law.

Does she really imagine that parliamentary draftsmen should be now at work on the Fred Goodwin Pension Reclamation Bill? In which case, exactly how much of Sir Fred’s pension does she think should be recouped? All of it? Or just 95 per cent of it? And what about all the other cock-up artists who used to be in charge of the Royal Bank, and what about the people who made a hash of Northern Rock, and all the bankers who have been kicked out of institutions in which the state has been obliged to take a share?

Will their assets be expropriated under the same Act? How will their guilt be determined, or will Hattie just put on her leopardskin accessories and stomp and jingle through the City, waving her calabash rattle and sniffing out the culprits?

Sir Fred’s settlement is nauseating; it is unbelievable. But it will be accepted, and it must be accepted, because it already has been accepted – by Harriet Harman’s ministerial colleague.

It is perfectly obvious that the deal was signed off by Paul Myners, a nice and able man who has been drafted by Gordon Brown to serve as the new minister for Major Banking Disasters. In the context of what the Government was doing – pouring billions into the RBS – the £16 million Goodwin pension pot must have looked like small change.

Myners probably thought there was no point in straining at that gnat, after swallowing the camel of government intervention. But then Myners is new to politics, and politics is all about straining at gnats.

It is hard to avoid the suspicion that the whole Goodwin episode has been whipped up by the Government to channel public anger against individual bankers and to mask the Treasury’s wider difficulties. It has emerged in the form of yet another leak to the BBC and it takes the story away from the vast spooling zeroes of government debt and down to a level that people can understand: one man and his greed.

Harriet Harman’s confected rage at the Goodwin pension is part of a narrative that Labour is trying to create: that the crisis was caused by reckless, greedy, smirking bankers, and now they must be made to pay. There is some strength in that analysis, but it ignores the role of government in the disaster: the reckless, greedy, smirking policies of excessive borrowing that have made matters so much worse.

In so far as Hattie wants to make Sir Fred and other bankers pay for their crimes, she is certainly in tune with the public mood: many people would happily see them strung from the lamp posts. It is indeed crazy that under Labour’s banking nationalisation, people such as Sir Fred can waltz off with vast pensions and bonuses, financed by the taxpayer.

But until Hattie can come up with a sensible way of unscrambling the deal struck by her own colleague, she should save her breath to cool her porridge.

There is one elegant and obvious solution to the whole mess, one that avoids either new laws or arbitrary Mugabe-style expropriations. That is to encourage bankers like Sir Fred to begin the slow and arduous climb back into favour by giving to charity, and in particular, Sir Fred, if you want to be thanked by some of the poorest and neediest in society, and if you feel it is time you were squirted with a fragrant jet of good PR, then can I recommend that you give a massive donation to the Mayor’s Fund for disadvantaged children in London?

[First published in the Daily Telegraph on 04 March 2009 under the heading, “Mad Hattie’s raving almost made me think of siding with Sir Fred”]

Giving to charity and all will be well? Would that be the “Build a wall against which to line the buggers prior to shooting them” charity? It’s the only one I can think of that would make me feel better about Fred and the other crooks.
What say you, Bozza? First go with the AK47?

I don’t know if I agree with the Mayor on this one. When sir Fred said something to the effect that he had lost his reputation, so he might as well hang on to the money, I was nauseated.

It is as though losing his reputation was all down to us being mean, and he deserved the money in compensation for having to endure that. Sir Fred has lost his reputation because of the dreadful judgment he has shown and the appalling, arrogant, irresponsible decisions he has made. He has cost the country so much money. Why should he expect a huge pension under those circumstances?

Of course I take on board every point the Mayor makes in his article, Sir Fred is not the only one, there are legal reasons why it would be wrong to do so, and legal reasons why any attempt to do so might not succeed.

But Harriet Harman. a politician who drives me up the wall, a maddening, patronising irritating public figure, in spite of her hypocritical stance on most things and her illogical thinking on absolutely everything , has said something that is absolutely true. For once I agree with her 100%. Morally, Sir Fred has absolutely no right to that money. To deny Sir Fred his pension would be the right thing to do, even if the government fight it legally and lose.

Obviously he shouldn’t be victimised by being the only sufferer. Start with him and then have a go at the others.

Personally I’d rather see the FSA and its links to the government investigated. They should be strung up for what they should have done over the last 12 years, but didn’t.
Bankers and the financial industry can only operate within the laws and rules laid down by government.

If the laws and rules are strict and the government of the day is doing its job correctly, then the taxpayer can have no cause for complaint, if they are not doing their job correctly, then the public have a clear right to demand answers and explanations. If they don’t get the facts then the government should go, without their pensions!

If the board of RBS thought that Sir Fred was guilty of some misconduct or poor performance then they should have fired him last year. If the government thought that Sir Fred was guilty of some misconduct or poor performance then they should have ensured he was fired last year. But he wasn’t, he was allowed to leave with his pension.

The government is stuck with the consequences of its own inaction (in banking regulation as much as in the case of Sir Fred Goodwin), so of course squeals “it’s not fair” rather than “mea culpa” or, in the modern vernacular, “my bad”.

Demutulisation and deregulation of the banking and money markets started all this. Sir Fred merely filled his boots as I and many others would have done had we the chance. Gordon “no more boom and bust” Brown sat back and filled his (the Goverment’s) boots and was happy to do so until the wheels came off.

In defence of his pension, Sir Fred produces a piece of paper bearing Lord Myners signature on it. To do so is as irrelevant as it is perversely amusing.

The irrelevance of it takes on something of the ‘Absolute’ when taken in the context of the national and international banking (and now broader economic) crisis. In that light, we are not the least bit amused. However, Sir Fred is not a Cause; he is just a natural Effect – an effect of a very large and very unpopular problem which has still more unpopular solutions and virtually all of them have to do with Education – I refer not to “mathematics” but the formation of minds and consciences of our children ‘to behave’.

The question is a moral one not a legal one.

If we teach our children that Man is a Producer before he is a Knower, he shall know nothing and spend his time producing things until he finds that ‘Theft has much better margins of p/l. Our society has for too long, and in recent decades more obtusely, institutionalised the medium of that theft, given it respectable titles and wrapped it in what is today the monster of a ‘banking sector’ where to ‘take from thy neighbour’ is exercised with glorious impunity.

Sir Fred’s failure is our failure. Of course Sir Fred has failed us, but we first failed Sir Fred. Our society did nothing to properly educate him beyond the very narrow tools of his seductive trade.

Sir Fred, very unluckily, is today strung out before the masses to give account. Better to us now than to his Creator later. His predecessors escaped giving their account to us, perhaps by the skin of their teeth but things are different for Sir Fred today. A system which ‘produced’ him has failed him as much as it has failed the nation.

The vast majority of investment banking teams are today largely bereft of the capacity to know what money is, how to earn it, how to spend it, how to risk it and how to create it, – how to create true wealth.

Few of the protagonists have ever run their own companies or been shareholders in the businesses they package out for sale to you and me. They haven’t the slightest notion of what the ‘fruits of labour’ actually are, no notion of salary, budget, or expense – or ‘how’ to price things, how to ‘value’ risk. If they did, we should not be in the position we are today.

A mirror has been raised and we find it ugly – we find ourselves ugly – because what we have produced is little short of a monster.

Franz, I don’t agree that Sir Fred’s failure is first of all our failure. So we get screwed over and now we have to take the blame for it too! I DON’T THINK SO. OK, some people took on too much credit. That is absolutely different to what Sir Fred has done. I also don’t go along with the argument that if there is no regulation, people in positions of responsibility are entitled to bleed the public to the limit. That’s the Jacqui Smith defence.

The action of people like Sir Fred have caused huge suffering to thousands of people, who have lost their homes, and their businesses. If he doesn’t care about that at all, which he obviously doesn’t, why should any of us support him keeping a massive pension, when he has blatantly failed to do what he was supposed to do? Millions of low paid hard working voters have nothing to do with his culpability at all, and I am sure when they look at themselves in the mirror, they feel absolutely fine.

Just because nobody brought bankers to task before, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t start now. Gordon Brown and the Labour Party will pay for their mistakes, because they will most likely be voted out at the next election and I bet they don’t get back for the next 50 years. Nick clegg is sneaking up, if the public ever tire of the Tories, I bet they will plump for Cleggover’s party.

For once, and crikey, it must be the only time, Harriet Harman is absolutely right. Forget the lap dancing fiasco, she has finally found an issue that we can all agree with.

The issue of whether Fred Goodwin does or doesn’t get his pension and Harriet Harman’s ridiculous comments is clearly a smoke screen to deflect and disperse public anger. Whether Sir Fred’s gets his pension doesn’t matter one bit economically and he is certainly not the first person to attract public anger – anyone remember Adam Applegarth? The bigger problem now is that if the public decides that no one is being punished or ever going to be punished for this situation apart from the general public (higher taxes) and savers (lower interest rates) there will likely be major public disorder very soon. Still on the plus side, the Labour party have achieved something that I thought was impossible before now. They’ve got my generation very interested in politics.

Aaaaah. It appears the ‘reckless, greedy, smirking bankers’ were only the tip of an iceberg of greed. We also need to consider the ‘reckless, greedy, smirking policies of excessive borrowing’ that the current administration indulged in.

Indeed. But while we’re looking for causes, may I add another layer of grossness? You’re probably too young to remember this stuff, Boris, but the stampede of greed can also be traced inexorably back to the reckless, greedy, smirking policy of deregulation that was initiated by the Holy Thatcher in the City of London in 1984.

Trust me. The targeted junk mail for loans and credit cards and other forms of over-extended borrowing has been cascading onto our doorsteps since way back in the 1980s. It took a little time to reach critical mass, is all.

I’m all for someone getting the blame for this. But let’s not get all party political about it and try and dump it on the other side like you usually do, eh Boris? They all had their blood-sucking, over-lobbied, self-centred hands in the cookie jar. And now no-one even has the courage to strip Goodwin of his knighthood.

That’s what power does to you. Be a good chap and try and remember that.

His pension was signed off in October 2008 by Paul Myners who was drafted in by Gordon Brown to sort out the banks’ problems at that time. Brown, Queen P, Darling, Harman and the Labour Government can not now say they had no idea of this agreement at all.

What about another banker who’s going to receive a pension of £1Million per year? At least, Goodwin only gets £650,000 per year.

As for Harman vowing to make emergency new law (!!!) to stop Goodwin receiving his thoroughly and legally approved full pension- well, she can think again- she’s a lawyer herself, I’m sure she knows how to do it !!!

And while she at it, she can make ’emergency’ new law to stop these lazy, cheating, good-for-nothing MPs, the Lords ( and MEPs ) from fiddling with allowances funded with taxpayers’ money.

You could say: EVERYBODY IS AT IT NOWSADAY ! Bloody dirty fat pigs !

By the way, Harman is going to introduce this new law of hers, seriously, that it will be illegal to call somebody by their class i.e working-class, middle-class or upper-class. Meaning, John Leslie Prescott will sue you if you call him a working class hero. Be warned.

Bee – the reason everybody’s persecuting Fred Goodwin is not because he’s broken the law or anything. He had a contract and an agreement and he stuck to it. His problem is that he appears to be so devoid of any kind of moral judgement that he doesn’t see it as greed to draw down a 650,000 pension PER YEAR when many thousands of people are losing their jobs and their homes as a result of his actions.

The buck has to stop somewhere. In a moral universe, that’s usually with the man in charge. Goodwin was in charge, and he should cut his pension down to a size commensurate with the misery he’s created. It’s nothing to do with contracts – it’s about doing the right thing.

That of course applies to the rest of them too. You take on a job, you screw it up, you shouldn’t expect or take any reward.

Mark, I understand your point. But, everybody and Goodwin know that NOWSADAY EVERYBODY IS AT IT- trying to make as much money as they can by ALL means regardless it’s legal or illegal. Look at the MPs, the Lords, the MEPs’ fiddling and their illegal private affairs – illegal becomes legal, legal but looks very illegal. The 4 cheating Lords have been cleared because Scotland Yard said ” it’s complicated ” !

There’s no morals anymore. And if the government don’t have any morals, why should Goodwin have any? And this is my point: Maybe Goodwin has morals, but when he looks at the immoral politicians, he doesn’t care any more. And who can blame him? Nobody knows when this recession will end, each man to his own. Sad.

I’m not sure who I dislike the most — Harman or Goodwin. Both of them are players and Harriet is no better than Fred.

I suppose I’m more on the libertarian side of things as I think the government should keep its nose out of the affairs of banks (and everything else). If banks fail, they fail. People should lose their pensions and their jobs, which is simply the natural order of things. Propping banks up with the money of taxpayers is inane. All bailouts of any kind should stop.

We are certainly living in interesting times. I came of age during the dotcom boom in Seattle and couldn’t imagine life wasn’t a succession of checking stocks multiple times a day to see how much shares had gone up and working hard to ensure you retired by the age of 30, as many people I know did.

People did a lot of stupid things then, but most of us kept our heads. I still remain positive about the future, but I think that the governments are all currently going about things in the wrong way. Boom and bust times are cyclical and should remain thus, without the government’s interference. Spending more money to get out of the hole everyone has dug themselves into by spending too much money will never work.

“…it takes the story away from the vast spooling zeroes of government debt…”, which is what governments are good at doing (not just spooling the zeroes) – using rubbish news items to hide their own incompetence (it makes you wonder what other bad news they’re burying). Stop this pathetic haranguing of Sir Fred – the boy done wrong, most certainly, but he was allowed to, and it was certified, sanctioned, and fully ratified.

Why, precisely, should we stop? Why should we stop haranguing anyone – banking chief executives, government ministers, or whoever?

I’ll repeat what I said earlier: people are losing their jobs and their homes because of the way our governments and our captains of industry behaved. Depressions don’t just cut back on your pension fund – they kill people. Not just here in the UK but all over the world.

Harangue them, I say. Over and over and over again until they understand that being put in a position of responsibility means just that: taking responsibility.

I find myself much to my suprise in complete agreement with Boris on this one.But I think it wise to point out that this man could not of achieved such an ignoble distinction entirely on his own.He as many others in the financial sector were handed the opportunity to excess on a plate when any sensible oversight was removed. Granted that to much oversight is restrictive to any commercial operation but if we operated with this lack of social responsibility anywhere else in the country individuals would be on the rack or dangling from a noose. Atomic power plants would be moving towards criticality, chemical plants wasting the countryside..need I go on? So why is or was it wrong to apply the same principals to financial institutes. Well there goes more of the tax payers money and they climb the heights while the rest of us fall.

Fred Goodwin added £300,000 A YEAR to his pension thanks to a SECRET DEAL to let him retire early, it was revealed last night.

It also now emerged that Goodwin had been acting as a Government ADVISER on financial issues just a few WEEKS ago!

His pension is now worth £703,000 a year, says RBS. If he had been sacked in October 2008- rather than allowed to retire early (!!!)- his pension would have been HAVLED to £416,000 a year. This is the figure he will get if Brown carries out his threat to sue Goodwin and wins.

If the bank had gone bust, Goodwin would have got just £27,770 a year. ( But surely, you could say that the bank had gone bust? )

Now, it has been revealed that Goodwin served on Chancellor Alistair Darling’s ‘HIGH LEVELS’ group of advisers until JANUARY 28 this year!

Shadow Chancellor George Osborne said:’First we discovered Labour Ministers knew about Goodwin’s obscene pension. And NOW we hear the astonishing news that Brown kept Goodwin as a senior adviser on banking months after he had been asked to resign from RBS!’

The Treasury Select Committee last night published a letter from RBS which revealed ‘Lord’ Myners was told last November about the pension deal for Goodwin,50. But the bank said Myners did not ask ANY ‘specific questions’ about the package. (Maybe Myners did not ask Brown who in turn did not ask Queen P for advice or inform Darling or even talk to Harman before letting Darling signed off on Goodwin’s pension deal?!!!)

Google: FRED’S PENSION WENT UP £300K GRAEME WILSON THE SUN
———————-

The Sun, 4/3/09: ‘Damaging rift emerged between Brown and Darling last night over whether to apologise for the slump. Darling said EVERYONE in Government had to admit mistakes in the run-up to the crisis’. A surefire-winner, I’m sure!

But Brown refused colleagues’ appeal to say sorry for his handling of the economy during his 10 years as Chancellor.

Brown told aides he ‘had nothing to apologise for’ and the banking failure alone was to blame.’

I advice while Brown is sucking Obama in USA right now, he should take the chance and apologise on Oprah’s show. It worked for Hugh Grant.

‘How acceptable would the ‘everybody’s doing it, so let it alone’ argument be then?’ (Angela)

Angela, I did not say that apply to everything i.e murdering. We were talking about obscene pensions APPROVED by the government, allowances-fiddling MPs, the Lords and the MEPs. What they do is legal, yet immoral cheating- even the police can not do anything about it. So what can you do?

The main point is: It was this incompetent Labour Government who approved Goodwin’s obscene pension. By law, he is entitled to his approved pension. Whatever he wants to with his pension money, it IS up to him. People should direct their anger mainly at the government who ARE the real cuprits here.

If your boss had approved your pension deal, then your colleagues got jealous and demanded you cut it by 3/4, would you do it?

God helps us if Harriet Harman ever gets her hands on power. She wants the rule of law replaced by ‘ a court of public opinion ‘. That’s a polite way of saying mob rule. She accepts that Goodwin has a legal right to his £639,000 pension. But she insists Labour will pass a law to take it off him ‘ because it’s not enforceable in the court of public opinion.’

Well, Harriet, your own colleague ‘Two Homes’ Secretary Jacqui Smith’s shameful expenses fiddle is not acceptable in the court of public opinion. Nor are the Labour Lords selling themselves to the highest bidder. Nor are benefit payments to Abu Qatada and his kind.

Nor is the treated-like-a-Royal return of Guantanamo fake ‘political’ asylum seeker-turned-terror suspect Egyptian Binyam Mohamed. Nor is the sight of smug Tony Blair swanning around the world making millions. Nor is the shameful way we treat our injured troops.

There are hundred things that Labour have done to us that deeply offend in the court of public opinion. But it’s the law of court that counts. And under the law, Goodwin has the right to keep all his money, however disgusting we all find it.

If we are going to start creating retrospective laws to take money back from people who don’t deserve it, Brown and half of the Cabinet will be dossing down in cardboard boxes. Can we pass a law to get rid of Harridan Harman? I bet Brown would love to.

Her beloved Human Rights Act makes it impossible to cancel Goodwin’s deal. Labour had their chance when they took over RBS last October. They could have cut his money to £27,000 a pear.

But Donkey Darling and his dimwit Banking Minister ‘Lord’ Myners were so incompetent they approved his vast retirement deal. Goodwin isn’t accused of fraud and the Chancellor Darling signed his payoff. I CAN’T see any legal way forward to get it off him.

The pantomime idea of the Prime Minister suing to get back what his Chancellor has given away sums up the shambles. The scandal was wheeled out by No10 last week because Brown wanted to take headlines away from the REAL story- his pledge of another £325 BILLION for RBS which will beggar us for decades.

It suits Brown to have Goodwin as a national hate figure. He has conveniently forgotten that he knighted him. And Goodwin is indeed shameless and grasping. And choosing Queen P to lecture Goodwin on morals is laughable!

But for Harriet Harman, campaigning for Labour leadership, to say ‘the court of public opinion’ should replace the law is disturbing. Whose opinion would count? Hers? Our Supreme Leader’s? Start down that road and we’ll be a dictatorship like Zimbabwe.

It was the government that approved the pension, but surely there was the proviso of some sort of success, not abject, colossal, appalling failure? The government certainly don’t approve of the pension now, and if they bring in retrospective legislation, which is legally reprehenaible, how is that worse than what Sir Fred has done? He has brought misery to countless thousands.

It isn’t a question of his colleagues being jealous; the point is, he has been criminally careless, taking unwarranted risks that affected millions. If he thought he would get his money anyway, why should he be bothered if it was a huge gamble? Surely this is what is wrong? If bankers feel they will get paid anyway, why should they balk at any risk at all?

Ken Clark was right when he said don’t pay the bankers their bonuses, let them sue for the money. I don’t care if it isn’t ethical to take their pensions and bonuses. It wasn’t ethical what they did to us. Repay them in kind and then we can all start afresh, ethical as you like.

To return to Harriet Harman, William Hague gave her a right drubbing in the House today, as they both stood in for their respective leaders.

Hague was embarrassing Hattie about her leadership ambitions and all the back stabbing and plotting she has been up to. Didn’t go down well at all! IF LOOKS COULD KILL……..

Harriet, I have had a good idea! You continually claim you are speaking for women with yor crackpot ideas on equality. Hold a survey, start with Londoners if you like. See who women prefer, you or Boris Johnson!

THE ANSWER IS A BIT OF A FOREGONE CONCLUSION.

ps. I understand that Tessa Jowell has ambitions to stand against Boris and try for London Mayor. I’D LOVE HER TO TRY! Please please, Tessa, go for it! BORIS BY A LANDSLIDE.

pps. Our Mayor is not to be disciplined over any phone calls he made regarding Damian Green. A victory for common sense. Labour are going for Boris at the moment, because they sense a foe more than worthy of their steel. SAVE YOUR BREATH TO COOL YOUR PORRIDGE LADS. Our Mayor is on a winning streak, he never misses a tackle, keeps scoring tries, so forget the yellow cards, he is too fly by half to be sin binned.

“Brown slapped down gaffe-prone deputy Harriet Harman yesterday for promising new laws to strip Sir Fred Goodwin off his pension.

Harman was cut adrift after vowing Ministers will force the shamed banker to hand back his £693,000 a year pension deal. The Prime Minister’s attempt to distance himself from her left the Government’s position on ‘Fred the Shred’ in disarray.

Earlier, Mr. Brown said he ‘ had ordered his lawyers to investigate ‘ every possible avenue ‘ to see if the money can be stopped. (!!!) But the Brown’s spokesman confirmed there were NO plans for new laws”. (!!!)
—–

Brown ordered his lawyers to investigate to see if the money can be stopped?! Well, that’s yesterday’s news and he was lying about that, as we now know why Brown is trying to distance himself from Harman because he knows that Goodwin might reveal to the press bad secrets involving Brown himself and and other Ministers ( that they gave Goodwin an extra £300,000 on top of his pension so he would agree to retire early and that Goodwin had been acting as Government paid advisor on financial issues just a few weeks AGO and that Myners was informed by RBS about Goodwin’s pension package but was never bothered to ask any specific questions let alone trying to stop it – as mentioned above ).

Desperately trying to keep Goodwin sweet, I don’t think Brown really asked his lawyers to investigate to see if Goodwin’s pension can be stopped, do you?

Gordon made his important speech to Congress, but unfortunately it was more landmine than landmark.

Aiming for a lofty note, and trying to out-Obama Obama in inspiring people, “There is nothing so hard we cannot achieve it”, he sounded manic and high as a kite, like he had overdosed on happy pills. Gordon just can’t do happy.

Supermarkets estimate they are losing at least £207 MILLION a year due to ‘grazers’ who steal food and eat it in the aisles. The shameless shoppers then hide the empty packaging and leave without paying. The credit crunch is blamed for tempting cash-strapped people to eat for free. One ASDA in Bournemouth is losing at least £200 a week to grazers. Security firm G4S said:” We find baskets littered with empty wrappers and half-eaten bunches of grapes. This is theft.”

Of course, that is theft. But who is to blame for this? It’s this incompetent Labour government, that’s who. They have been busily fiddling with allowances and expenses, setting bad examples of themselves. And that is on top of their nonsense political correctness law. No wonder morals are in decline.

Having said that, I mean if I saw any grazer do that, I would never dream of twaddling off to grass them to the store’s security guard. Even if that means I could get close the hunky, handsome security guard, smell his manly sweat and maybe a chance to brush my hand gently across his perky bum… Oh, young man! Young man!

No way. I just blame Brown and his cronies for ruining this once beautiful, peaceful and orderly country- the one I studied in my old English textbook where you would see the postman, the milkman go around doing their jobs every morning, the red letter boxes, the City men with a bowler hat, brolly and a copy of over-sized newspaper under their arm, crossing the London Bridge…

Gordon Brown was hilarious at Congress! I think it’s startlingly clear that nobody on the other side of the pond respects him for various reasons — not the least of which is that he wasn’t even voted in, and Americans are firm believers in holding elections, even if they don’t like the outcome. Silly Comrade Brown! Obama and crew also know that Stalin Lite won’t be around for much longer. Soon the Tories will be running the show.

Kristine, you have made an excellent point. it really grates with me that GB wasn’t voted in. Under the circumstances of the dreadful mess he has made, his speech bordered in ludicrous. Stalin Lite! Ilove it!

ps. William Hague today in the House to Harriet Harman: “Of course, I’m only a deputy. But at least I’m a loyal deputy”. UPROAR. David Millband was disloyally sniggering over Harriet’s shoulder.

Do you know that song “They’re smiling in your face. But they want to take your place. THE BACK STABBERS! cHORUS: OOO! THE BACK sTABBERS!” Such a great song, by the Motown Group, the O’Jays. They should play that at the next Labour conference.

‘….the one I studied in my old English textbook where you would see the postman, the milkman go around doing their jobs every morning, the red letter boxes, the City men with a bowler hat, brolly and a copy of over-sized newspaper under their arm, crossing the London Bridge…’

Awwww. Sigh. Sharp intake of nostalgic breath. Life was so much simpler in the 1960s…

Boris , get on the phone to your friends and tell them the way to nail Fred and his cronies is to prosecute them under the STATUTORY duty of directors to safeguard the assets of their companies…..
Another is ‘carrying on a business knowing it to be insolvent’ < this carries personal liability.
Surely the other directors involved should all be fired now?
Cheers

THE FACTS:
– Brown is not brave enough to sack Goodwin for incompetence. Instead, he made a ‘secret deal’ with Goodwin (an extra £300,000 on top of his pension. Total £695,000 a year) in order to make Goodwin agree to retire early. As you do. The public still had no idea about this secret deal.

– When Brown was about having to announce more bad news (another £325 Billion bank bail-out), he also realised that the press was about to find out this secret deal, he decided to leak Goodwin’s mega pension to the press to make Goodwin a national sweetheart, I mean hate-gigure. Also to draw attentions way from the bad news.

– Brown then declared he had contacted his lawyers to investigate to see if the pension can be stopped. Harman was also drafted in to vow wildly that she would use a new ‘court of public opinion’ to stop Goodwin get his money.

– Goodwin’s old pals at RBS were so mad at Labour’s antics that they decided to leak the facts about the secret deal.

– Realising they are now in deep shit and knowing that, by law, they can not cancel the pension and get their full refund back from M&S, they are now desperately banking on Queen P’s spinning advice (Oprah’s style) of using the ‘court of public opinion’ to pile pressure on Goodwin to make him to drop his pile (money). Also to get THEMSELVES off the hook and out of the cesspit and back to business as normal.

LABOUR’S LIES: Brown claimed he had ordered his lawyers to try to stop Goodwin’s pension.

THE TRUTH: A secret pension deal had been made between Brown and Goodwin before Goodwin retired.

LABOUR’S LIES: Harman vowed to use the court of public opinion to stop the pension.

THE TRUTH: Harman had already known about the secret deal when she made that vow.

THE CONSEQUENCES:
– If Labour can use the comical ‘court of public opinion’ to stop Goodwin’s pension, they will look like national heroes.

– If Labour can’t stop Goodwin’s pension, they will be seen as useless, stupid and will lose more and more votes.

Czech President Vaclav Klaus just declared that: ‘The EU is turning into a One-Party-State that is out of touch with ordinary people. A new Soviet Union in the making!’

Waaaarhey! I’ve said that many times before on this site. No boasting but I can see through commies, lefties, socialists, Old Labour, New Labour like an X-rays machine.

There’re 2 groups:
– Hardcore commies: Russia, Cuba, North Korea and the likes. These are very dangerous, cunning and highly damaging to the free world.

– Commies wannabes: lefties, socialist, Old Labour, New Labour, the EU… They’re hardcore commies’ unwitting tools (paid or unpaid), are quite damaging to the free world. They’re everywhere; some are Lords, some even work in some workers’ unions.

Look at the damages Labour has done to this country. Look at the damages the EU has done to western Europe.

‘Hazel Blairs has taken a side-swipe at political correctness by urging everyone to ‘lighten up’. The Communities Secretary believes it is OK to poke fun at religion without being offensive. She said some over-sensitive people now fear upsetting anyone. And she said: ‘ That runs the risk of leaving bigger issues unchallenged.’ (The Sun, 2/3/09)

-Labour, Jan 2009 (!!!): We will make sure that every household will have broadband internet installed by 2012.

-Harridan Harman, 2/3/09: We will set up a ‘Court of Public Opinion’ to stop his unacceptable pension.

Talking about Harridan Harman’s Court Of Public Opinion. Whilst she’s at it, I’m asking her to sort out these unacceptable matters as well:

– The unacceptable obsense salariries the BBC are paying to the celebrities.

– The unacceptable obsense salaries the BBC topdogs are paying THEMSELVES ( ranging from £650,000 per year for Topdog Thompson through to £450,000 per year for a fanny Patel finance director down to £200,000 per year for bottom dogs).

– The unacceptable TV licence which people have been complaing about for years.

– The unacceptable issue of MPs, Lords… fiddling with their allowances and expenses.

The list is endless, I can’t list them all here but I’m sure The Court Of Public Opinion know what they are.

Catherine… Sorry. I used to read Julie Burchill when she was a singles reviewer on the NME. She said things for effect then, and still does now.

We’re going to have to disagree about Mrs Thatcher. Personally, I think far too many politicians wear ‘strong leadership’ on their sleeves like some kind of fetish. They’d do better to concentrate on ‘effective leadership’.

I’ve tried very hard to find something about Mrs Thatcher’s administration I consider a success. For a while I kind of allowed her ‘got the unions under control’. That is until I thought through the miner’s strike and the utterly reprehensible spectacle of a police force that was supposed to serve all our citizens being used as a front line force in the destruction of working class communities that have never recovered. Yes, Scargill was an idiot not to call a ballot; yes, the mines were uneconomic and needed reform. But destroying their lives to score a political point? No. It doesn’t wash, ever.

Ditto the Falklands War. Tub-thumping a naval race memory to change the direction of the polls. It didn’t need to have been fought – read James Callaghan on that. And the Belgrano was sailing away from the exclusion zone. What kind of person orders that kind of strike?

Ditto (ditto, ditto, ditto) the deregulation of the City. ‘Big Bang’, they called it in 1984 – and how right they were: it was the direct cause of the avalanche of greed that led to the current mess.

Ditto the endless privatisations. That’s the Conservative recipe for any problem: instead of fixing it, they bundle it up, sell it off, wait for the people who can afford it to corner the market in shares, and then whine about how it’s all wonderful because the wealth ‘trickles down’ to the poor.

It doesn’t. Wealth trickles in only one direction: to Swiss bank accounts.

I’m not defending the Labour administration in the slightest. They’ve been just as Thatcherite – arguably in a more deceitful way, because they pay lip service to social justice. I merely point out, from time to time, that this blog is a little too quick off the mark in allocating blame to the Labour Party. It’s easier that way, I suppose.

” Who do you know who is sacked, who gets their pension? NO-ONE ” ( Angela, March 4 @ 6.44 PM )

Well, we all know that Goodwin was NOT sacked. Brown was not brave enough to sack him. Goodwin only agreed to retire early AFTER Brown sweetened him with an extra £300,000 on top of his pension.

But, didn’t you know that Stephen Hester, RBS chief executive, his contract shows that if he is SACKED he will get 21 months pay ( worth more than £2.2 Million) plus £1.6 Million to compensate for LOSS of bonuses. Total £4 Million. Waaaarhey! Money grows on trees, eh?

Now, Angela, you tell me- Do you know anyone who has been sacked and still gets paid £4 Million to compensate for being… (drum call)… SACKED ? You only get sacked if you have been a bad worker.

-London. Early morning. Harridan Harman holding a big, red Hammer & Sickle flag in her hand, leading her Court Of Public Opinion mob, with Queen P and Darling behind her. ( Brown’s still in USA ). Each member of the mob group holds a machete in his hand.

-They start running from the Capital, heading north, shouting “Kill, kill, kill the pigs!” along the way. They cross the border into Heathersland where poor Fred has been hiding. The mob find him and terminate him ( Arnold’s style ).

-The mob then do a 3 points turn, heading south, shouting “Kill, kill, kill the pigs!” along the way, crossing the border into Asylumseekersland. The mob are about to storm into the House of Parliament where they intend to sort out the unacceptable, bad, cheating MPs and Lords from the good ones. BUT they change their mind, because Harman says so.

-They then run towards the BBC, shouting “Kill, kill, kill the pigs!” along the way. They continue their “Arnold” mission all day, seeking out more unacceptable individuals until only Brown, Queen P, Darling, Harman, Blears and their cronies left.

“Duty to safeguard company’s assets – A director could be made personally liable in the event of misappropriation or misapplication of the company’s assets (including its confidential information) if he failed to take reasonable care in safeguarding those assets.”

I would have thought that the business case backing up the use of some of the derivative based products that caused this mess would be quite easy to discredit. They certainly have great their uses but the risks involved if misapplied are enormous (as we are now seeing). The risks were always there, it’s just people like Fred Goodwin were arrogant enough to ignore them.

Of course if Gordon Brown’s team of lawyers are anywhere as near as efficient as the rest of the government then Fred should be in for a long and happy retirement and I’ve just wasted the last 10 minutes writing this post.

RBS is in such a mess and is clearly insolvent without Government aid. In a normal commercial situation, it would have been placed into Administration. This is what should happen now. The Administrator would discontinue all contributions to the Pension Fund and this would bring an end to the ‘Fred the Shred’ problem.
It will of course have an adverse effect on other pension beneficiaries but Parliament can pass an Act empowering the Administrators to make ex gratia payments at their sole discretion where appropriate. This would destroy any claims that Fred might have under the Human Rights Act.
So what do Harriet Harman’s not so brilliant team have to say about this?
The Administation procedure will give the Government a chance of cleaning up RBS once and for all because I cannot see their problems disappearing in the short term. Drip feeding is not the answer.
John Papi

Thanks, Angela. You sound nice, too.
————————————————————
Anyway, yesterday I wrote About Harridan Hardman (!) leading the mob to Heathersland to do poor old Fred in. Well, I want to change the script a bit to make it more realistic:

– London, early morning. Harridan Hardman holding a big, red Hammer and Sickle flag high, her bare arms are bulging with muscles much, much bigger than Mrs.Obama’s; the result of her excessive weight-lifting using Queen P as the tool, ginger turfs peeking out from her underarms. Queen P, Darling are behind their gangleader. Next is the Court Of Public Opinion mob. Each of them holds a Lightsaber.

– Hardman bellows: ‘On your mark! Get set! GO!’
The whole lot starts to run off, heading north towards Heathersland where poor old Fred has been hiding in. They find him hiding under a thin blanket of Heathers. They demand him drop his pile ( his money, mind ). Fred refuses to drop his pile, saying: ‘I can’t do it on demand. Have you laxatives?’. They say No, and do him in.

– Whilst there, the mob pop in and ask to register for a free University place. Heatherian Unis laugh: ‘No, loves! They are free only to Heatherians, our EU friends from west and east. But not to yous. Yous have to pay’. The mob say: ‘But… we fund your Unis with our taxpayers’ money’. Heatherians retort: Don’t matter!!!

– So, the mob make a 3 points turn, heading south back to Mockland- under Labour, they have mockbankers, mockMP3s, mockLords, mockSirs, mockjobs (non-jobs), mockcouncillors (town hall fat cats), mockasylumseekers, mockunder-house-arrest-terror-suspects ( they get social benefits payments paid direct into their bank accounts, no need signing-on every 2 weeks like everybody else ), mockrecyclings ( householders sort out their rubbish nicely as ordered by councils, the councils just tip them all up together, ship them to China for charged dumping ), mockpolice ( Police in tight uniforms, bulging muscles, dark LA shades (!!!), leisurely trolly around cities’ shopping malls to stop passing teenagers to get their personal details and write it down in their notebooks regardless they have done anything wrong or not, making sure they stop 2 whites, 2 blacks, 2 yellows and 2 browns- in line with their political correctness policy. They are really wasting those mucles. Sigh.)

– Anyway, upon reaching Mockland, the mob ask Hardman: ‘So, what next? Shall we go and sort out the BBC fatcats, the mockasylumseekers, the mock-under-house-arrest-terror-suspects?’. Hardman bellows: No! leave them!

– The mob then ask Hardman: ‘So, what next? Shall we go and sort out the mockMP3s, the mockLords, the mockSirs and do them in?’. Hardman bellows: ‘No! Leave them! You are done now. Go home! And don’t call us, we will call you. GOODBYE! ‘

-Brown dared not sack Fred. He bribed Fred with £300K on top of his pension to get him agree to retire early. Nobody knew about this secret deal.

-Thinking the press about to fing out, Brown leaked the pension, but not about the bribe. The leak also covered bad news of another £325 BILLION bank bail-out.

-Due to public out-cries, Brown lied that he had ordered his lawyers to investigate to stop the pension.

-Trusting what Brown said, Harman helpfully made wild vow of using the Court of Public Opinion to stop the pension.

-Scared that Harman’s comical, wild vow might anger Fred and make him squeal to the press, Brown tried to distance himself from Harman to calm Fred down. Brown’s spokesman was ordered to rubbish Harman’s wild vow. Behind closed door, they told Harman about the secret deal.

-Fred’s old pals at RBS were so mad with Brown’s cunning antics that they leaked detail of the secret deal to the press. Now, everybody knew.

-Finally, Brown admitted that, by law, they could not stop Fred’s pension. Harman was ordered to stick to her wild vow of The Court Of Public Opinion to calm the public down for the time being and as long as possible- false hope.
But, inside, they also hope that increasing public opinion might put pressure on Fred to drop his pile and get themselves off the hook, out of the cesspit they are in right now.

-On Wed 4/3/09 Standing in for Brown at the Prime Minister Questions Time in the Parliament, Harman was challenged and asked if Labour were still trying to stop Fred’s undeserved obsense pension, she only replied weakly: ‘ The Government are exploring all possible avenues for clawing back the money.’ Meaning, ‘Please, leave me alone! It’s all lies and we all know that, so why asked?’.

Gordon Brown rallied Democrats with his left-wing appeal to America- but the Republicans were not so impressed. He enjoyed 19 standing ovations, but most of them began with the democrats leaping to their feet.

Mr. Brown started out by praising America to the hilt- triggering spontaneous ovations from all sides. But his message to America that the wealthy and successful should put the poor first is not to Republican tastes. Many were thinking the rich and successful have got there by merit and risk-taking – not by enjoying handouts from the State.

And while Congress was packed, it was not with politicians. There were many “staffers” and interns taking up seats. Gone are the days when a British PM was such a star draw that Blair was cheered from as he walked through US hotel lobbies.

Mr. Brown left America last night with a vastly different Special Relationship. A new President has taken over- and it is hard to claim he and and the PM have an obvious chemistry.

President Obama paid lip service to the bonds between America and Britain. Things are definitely not what they used to be.

( George Pascoe-Watson, political columnist, the Sun 5/3/09 )

Oh, my God! What a laugh! Especially the bit about the rich and the poor and handouts from the State!

I so agree with you about Obama and Gordon, EMBARRASSING. So gushing. Still it is all not as embarrassing as George W. and Tony Blair, there was a huge subtext there, I swear! They could hardly keep their hands off each other.

Poor Gordon and I am genuinely beginning to feel sorry for him now, because he does not deserve to carry the burden of the blame for the economic crisis. He is certainly partially to blame, but not wholly. His governmental team are so craven and disloyal, it is nasty to see. If Labour all rallied, like the Old Guard did at Waterloo, showed some guts and refused to surrender…. The Old Guard were surrounded by English infantry and asked to surrender to save their lives. They stood in silence and suddenly one French soldier spat out a defiant “Merde!” and they were all shot down where they stood.

The back stabbing, the plotting, the fights for the leadership, the huge lack of loyalty if anything, provide some sympathy for Gordon Brown, because he is now truly beleaguered. The Tories may have had their leadership coups, but they have been united for a long time under David Cameron.

“Mr. Brown started out by praising America to the hilt- triggering spontaneous ovations from all sides. But his message to America that the wealthy and successful should put the poor first is not to Republican tastes. Many were thinking the rich and successful have got there by merit and risk-taking – not by enjoying handouts from the State.”

Heck, I’d even go so far as to say it’s not American taste, let alone Republican! If you can’t make it in America, you can’t make it anywhere. Most of the rich in America are rich through sheer hard work and determination, with a little smidgen of luck thrown in for good measure.

The wealthy of America are also hugely generous and usually donate quite handsomely to charities. However, it’s up to each person to do the best that they possibly can for themselves, and that can’t happen if they’re living off government handouts, which is why there is a 2 year limit on welfare in America.

Gordon Brown and his ilk could never possibly understand this as they desperately need people living off the government that will vote for them. I’m fairly certain that the Eastern European couple that live 2 houses down from us that are milking the system and living in a free house paid for by the council and receiving disability benefits (even though they’re both 100% fine) will vote for New Labour whenever possible.

If Gordon Brown was a true leader he would have called an election and let the people of England have their say. A real leader is chosen by the people. Yet Gordon Brown still desperately clings to power and shows himself for what he truly is. Americans have no respect for people like him.

Baby bee, there is a thing you said before I forgot to answer. When I said “Who do you know who is sacked who gets their pension, I did know that Sir Fred had agreed to resign, but I meant, he should have been sacked for negligence.” the shouldn’t have accepted his resignation, but sacked him.

Angela, it IS true that Brown bribed Goodwin with an extra £300,000 one-off; on top of his pension. Let me check my old papers and will let you know later.

People are saying on internet that Brown, Mandelson and Darling kept Harman in the dark about the secret deal as their laid-out trap, promting her to make wild vows and fall into the trap- see the situation she is in right now! -because she dares to try to nick Brown’s job. Now she looks too stupid for the top job and she’s stuck!

Regardless she can stop Fred’s pension or not, an impossible task, people will never forget about these Labour’s highly serious blunders and will not vote Labour again either at local or general elections.

And now it has been revealed that Lord Myners is himself drawing £100 a year pension from NatWest, which RBS bought in 2000. People are pointing out that NatWest belongs to RBS, both of which have been bailed out with taxpayers’ money because they both were going bust. If Fred doesn’t deserve his obsense pension, why should Myners?

But Myners is sticking to his gun. When challenged and asked about his rediculous pension by Shadow Commons Leader Alan Duncan: ‘Lord Myners’s willingness to rubber-stamp Sir Fred’s payoff has something to do with the fact that Lord Myners himself has got a £100,000 pension entitlement from the RBS Group?’. Harriet Harman replied for Myners: ‘Lord Myners made it absolutely clear that this was a decision not of the Government but a decision of the old (!!!) RBS Board.’

Oh, Gee! They just twist and turn the facts like holding a piece of playdough in their hand to suit themselves! Look at Woothworths; I’ve read that Administration Deloitte managed to raise enough money from all Woolworth’s shops’ final sales to pay back the main lenders ( the banks ), but the smaller lenders ( goods suppliers ) and the staff ( managers, shop assistants ) got nothing. The staff were only paid for their un-used annual holidays. The reason why: Because the Woolworths Company went bust! This should apply to these bank workers, too, surely. To me they are only workers/ staff like everybody else.

It’s such a shame that Harriet Harman has such a low view of women. She thinks we vote because people are good looking, and will have their wicked way with us in the election booth, to quote her words, she thinks we suffer more in the recession…. she thinks she has to explain the simplest things to us and legislate about them, because we don’t have any common sense…. A SAD REFLECTION.

Andrew, like you I can’t quite work out why the Directors’ duty of care was not invoked more thoroughly across the whole banking fiasco but I guess that’s one of the many reasons I’m not a senior politician!

More generally: It must be tough being a senior-but-still-employed banker or financier now. If any good, those people are being vilified and yet know that other people are desperate for them to do a brilliant job and dig pensions, mortgages, jobs out of a huge hole. The mess means Plan B for me (keep working) is now Plan-A-somehow but tabloid scapegoating and political grandstanding won’t solve a thing. The hard job for politicians of all hues is going to be to provide ‘just enough’ regulation without stifling those remaining banking sector people who understand complex markets. Politicans as bankers is perhaps the worst of all worlds.

Your suggestion will be highly unpopular (you may think populism a bad thing in a democracy – heaven forbid it)

When an illegal immigrant is made legal he can only work legally on a higher rate of pay – therefore his ’employer’ will seek another illegal immigrant to take his place. The newly accepted immigrant will either compete against the unemployed for a proper job or for benefits.

if that doesn’t work, try http://www.journalisted.com
then ask for Graeme Wilson, and then move down the list of his old articles, and click the one ‘Fred’s pension went up by £300K’. Good lucks!

I hope the opposition MPs will keep asking Harman and Brown the same question at every PMQs time – ‘ When are you going to stop Goodwin’s obscene pension? ‘. This will keep the scandal alive, pile more pressure on them and make them look bad and lose their jobs.